Chenoweth picks 5 favorite films about families

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stage and screen veteran Kristin Chenoweth plays a hard-charging, high-powered executive in the dark indie comedy “Family Weekend” — a wife and mom who’s too busy for her husband and kids, who are all too busy for each other anyway.

Teenage daughter Emily (Olesya Rulin) finally has enough of the neglect when everyone blows off her big jump-roping competition at school. She rounds up her selfish, scattered relations for a long and tortured intervention — which includes tying mom and dad (Matthew Modine) to chairs, duct-taping their mouths shut and detailing their years of offenses.

Chenoweth was nice enough to take the time to pick her own favorite movies about families. Here she is, in her own words.

— “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983): It’s a classic dysfunctional family with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. It’s so over the top but yet you buy it. In some ways, our film “Family Weekend” has a similar dysfunctional family.

— “The Sound of Music” (1965): It’s about a fractured family that comes together with the new stepmom who wins them over in the end. This is a good family film.

— “RV” (2006): It’s a family film that I was in which is about what it’s like to go cross country with your family. I absolutely love this one. Robin Williams cracks me up.

— “Steel Magnolias” (1989): It’s a family film about relationships between the women and even the husbands are involved. Being a Southern woman, I get and know all of those women.

— “Gone With the Wind” (1939): It’s about relationship of a girl and her land. It’s family oriented and about loss.